PM on Housing Report: Still Much to Do

The Comptroller's Report on housing is “a very important document on which we place a great deal of importance,” PM Netanyahu said.

Moshe Cohen, 26/02/15 01:14

Construction site (illustration)

Flash 90

The Comptroller's Report on housing prices is “a very important document that we place a great deal of importance on,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office said Wednesday. “We believe that the report raised many serious issues and solutions, which we shall work on implementing,” the PMO said in a statement.

Netanyahu was responding to a nearly 300 page report by Yosef Shapira that painted a depressing picture of Israel's housing market, and its lack of affordability. The report said that housing prices had increased 55 percent and rent costs by 30 percent between 2008 and 2013, and that "no solution has been found or implemented” by Netanyahu's government, which took office in 2009, to try to slow the continuing rise.

In 2014, prices increased another five percent, figures published this week showed. In the face of "soaring house prices," wages barely increased during the period, the report said. "The various government departments reacted with no strategic plan of action in the long term, and without any goals set," it said.

While the statement admitted that there was a problem, it said that the Prime Minister had done a great deal to prevent even worse damage.

“The report itself points out the many things we did, but I do admit that there is a great deal more to be done,” Netanyahu said in the statement. “I intend to tackle these problems in our next government with our natural allies. They, too, are interested in tackling this problem and I am sure that together we will be able to undertake this great mission.”